Tag: Amazon Kindle

Another short(ish) post. I thought I’d update you with how things are for me right now writing-wise. Well I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and having plenty of heart to hearts with my husband about my writing.

And I’ve been thinking: what do I really want most – to write whatever I want, or to write the books that people want to read? See, I think it’s like this: different people may like different genres of books BUT most people also like reading what they’re used to.

So if someone likes, say, sci-fi, they will usually want to read a novel that is recognisibly that: sci-fi. Similarly romance, or a thriller or a detective story. People like what they like – it may sound trite or like a sweeping statement (which, yes, it could be seen as) but I think it’s very often true.

Now with me it’s like this: I enjoy writing (obviously!) and for a while now I’ve been struggling with being torn between writing whichever story idea comes into my head, or writing for a particular genre and thereby gaining more readers. The thing is I don’t want to write like a fraud – I want to write authentically – to be true to myself and my writing style.

As I said to my husband – you can’t fit a square peg in a round hole. Like the rest of my life, with my writing I can’t be something I’m not. But I need to do something radical. I’ll be honest – my sales have hit rock bottom and yeah I’m really gutted about that.

So at my husband’s suggestion (and this idea has grown and grown on me) I’m gonna try something new. I’m going to write a short(ish) story, maybe a novella, and I’m going to pick a genre and aim my story fairly and squarely at that. It’s going to be a romance, still working on the details and I’m not gonna give too much away, but let’s just say I’m hoping that by aiming at a particular sub-genre of romance, I may be able to do a bit better.

It’s gonna be a bit of an experiment and it may not work, but my hope is that I can get my writing noticed a bit more and who knows – I might have people read this new story and think ‘I wouldn’t mind reading another of Elaine Jeremiah’s novels’, thereby increasing my sales.

It’s a gamble, but hey I’ve got nothing to lose! I do think it’s a bad time for all indie authors at the mo what with Kindle Unlimited being introduced and all that, but quite frankly I’m going to keep persevering with my writing until there’s no breath left in my body! So I’m going to be a bit more calculating in my approach – and write what (I hope) people will really want to read.

Have you ever reached a point in your writing journey where you decided you needed to change tack? How is it panning out for you?

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

Hi everyone. How are you this cold January day? Well it’s certainly cold here in Bristol, UK today! So I’m mostly staying snuggly indoors and catching up on blogging and writing… and maybe a bit of housework I suppose. 😉

I have an exciting webpage to share with you today. It’s from Ghergich & Co who’ve teamed up with CustomMade to create an article on ereaders vs print books.

It’s an interesting and informative article analysing whether the ereader or the traditional book has a greater negative impact on the environment in their production and consumption.

I would thoroughly recommend taking a look – it’s quite thought provoking and asks you to consider things you might not have before.

Share this:

Like this:

Today I’m taking part in the cover reveal for Jessica Minyard for her debut novel Stones and Finger Bones. Here’s a synopsis:

Aurelia Barone, Jewel of Starry Stone, harbors no illusions about the purpose of her life as heir to the throne. But after two failed betrothals, she starts to feel like nothing more than a pawn being moved aimlessly about a game board.

Until the night she loses everything.

Kidnapped by a wise-cracking mercenary with more than one identity, Aurelia embarks on a mission across land and sea to avenge her father’s death.

But an evil is rising from the ashes of memory. Insidious magic is stirring. The dregs of a once-powerful nation are thirsty for blood and revenge.

They seek to harness Aurelia. To tempt her. To manipulate her.

And if necessary, to destroy her.

And here is the cover:

Isn’t it great? And here’s some info about Jessica:

Jessica lives in Kentucky with a spoiled pitbull and has a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Murray State University.

She wrote and illustrated her first story in the fourth grade. “The Dragon of Grindley Grun” was about an evil wizard, a princess, and a dragon who was actually a prince. She likes to think her writing has evolved since that very first story, even though she still writes about magic and evil wizards, sometimes.

Thankfully, she no longer illustrates her stories. Stones and Finger Bones is her first novel.

Share this:

Like this:

OK guys I really need some advice here. As many of you will be aware, I’ve self-published two novels, The Inheritance and Reunion of the Heart, on Amazon Kindle within about a year of each other (September 2013, August 2014).

The thing is neither of them have taken off – I mean AT ALL – and I’m feeling really low about it. I will admit that I haven’t done a huge amount of promotion for either and I guess you would all say that that is why they haven’t sold much.

But here’s the thing: I’m not entirely convinced about the positive impact of lots of (and sometimes costly) promotion. I’m not convinced that putting them on a number of different promo sites would make a massive amount of difference. Or tweeting about them. Or Facebooking etc.

About a year ago I put The Inheritance on a free promotion. I got nearly 9500 downloads. But I was really disappointed that it didn’t translate into sales. I think part of the problem was that around that time Amazon stopped promoting free books hence my struggle to get more sales afterwards.

So anyway last weekend I decided to do an experiment and put The Inheritance on sale at 99c. I thought maybe I might get a few more sales. I did tweet about it but so far nothing.

I’ve read some ebooks about getting to know how Amazon and its algorithms work and how to use that to my advantage. I’ve tried changing some of the keywords on Reunion of the Heart but that hasn’t seemed to make any difference either.

Some of these books have also suggested various ways to promote your novel strategically, things like setting up a mailing list. But would these work or affect my sales if I haven’t got a book coming out soon? I would also struggle with setting up a mailing list as I haven’t got a clue how it’s done!

I feel frustrated because I think (maybe erroneously!) that my books are as good as many other people’s that are out there and doing OK for themselves. The main problem is that no one knows they’re there. Also, as my husband has pointed out, I write in a broad genre (i.e. contemporary romance) and so it’s hard to target my potential audience with things like good keywords because there are so many titles out there.

Argh! Anyway, I feel like I need to create a good strategy, a plan to give my books a bit of a kick start so that I can somehow let people know that they’re out there and are worth a read. But I don’t know where to start. I’m also tired from my new day job (which is great BTW – I can be thankful for that at least!) and I don’t want to take on too much extra work at the moment.

Any suggestions? Or anyone going through a similar experience?

*I should add that I’ve heard from a writer friend that ebook sales (particularly in the UK) are down which I guess doesn’t help!

Share this:

Like this:

I’m pleased to be promoting my fellow author Laekan Zea Kemp on my blog today. She has just released her new novel The Girl In Between, which will become perma-free on October 31st. See the links below for where you can download copies for free! And I am appearing on Laekan’s blog later on today too. She’s interviewing me about my writing process and my experience of self-publishing. Click here in a while to check it out.

Synopsis: Bryn Reyes is a real life sleeping beauty. Afflicted with Klein-Levin Syndrome, she suffers episodes of prolonged sleep that steal weeks, and sometimes even months, from her life. But unlike most KLS patients, she doesn’t spend each episode in a catatonic state or wake up with no recollection of the time she’s missed. Instead, Bryn spends half her life in an alternate reality made up of her memories. For Bryn, the past is a place, until one day a boy she’s never met before washes up on the illusory beach of her dreams with no memory of who he is.

But the appearance of this strange boy isn’t the only thing that’s changed. Bryn’s symptoms are worsening, her body weakening as she’s plagued by hallucinations even while awake. Her only hope of finding a cure is to undergo experimental treatment created by a German specialist. But when Dr. Banz reveals that he knows more about her strange symptoms than he originally let on, Bryn learns that the boy in her head might actually be the key to understanding what’s happening to her, and worse, that if she doesn’t find out his identity before it’s too late, they both may not survive.

Laekan is a writer and explorer extraordinaire who grew up in the flatlands of West Texas. She graduated from Texas Tech with a BA in Creative Writing and is the author of the multi-cultural New Adult novels The Things They Didn’t Bury, Orphans of Paradise, Breathing Ghosts, and the Young Adult novel The Girl In Between, which is the first in an upcoming paranormal romance series.

Share this:

Like this:

Do you like to read romance novels? Wouldn’t you like to know more about your favorite authors? Well you’ve come to the right place! Join the writers of Romance Weekly as we go behind the scenes of our books and tell all… About our writing of course! Every week we’ll answer questions or share some flash fiction and after you’ve enjoyed the blog on this site we’ll direct you to another. So come back often for a thrilling ride! Tell your friends and feel free to ask us questions in the comment box.

Hello all! If you’ve joined me from Vicki Mixon’s blog then welcome. This week we’re answering a question set by the lovely Sarah Hegger. She wants to know what our three favourite book boyfriends are and why. So here goes.

I have to admit that to begin with this was a hard question for me to answer. I read all sorts of books, not just romances and they don’t all have specific boyfriends in them about whom I could honestly say ‘Yep, that’s a great book boyfriend’. But thinking about it I thought actually, yeah there a number that I like.

I think for me the number one is probably Mark Darcy from Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding. This is because he likes Bridget as she is; he’s not afraid to go out on a limb for her or to admit when he’s been wrong. He’s clever – he’s a top barrister (lawyer for those of you not in the UK) after all – and of course gorgeous. He also gets Bridget out of sticky situations like saving the day when she has a culinary disaster. Basically he’s my kind of man!

Then there’s the character of Dexter from One Day by David Nicholls. For those of you who haven’t read it, this is a really ingenious romance as it follows the lives of two people, Dexter and Emma, over the course of 20 years. We meet them on just one day in July – 15th, St Swithin’s Day – every year and see how their lives gradually change. Dexter doesn’t want to be with Emma to begin with and it takes a long while for him to realise what he feels for her.

But for me Dexter is a wonderful character because he’s not perfect, he often lets Emma down but he gets the chance to atone for his past mistakes and they finally get together. (That’s not the end of the book, but for those of you who haven’t read it I’m not telling you what is!) Dexter is lovely, he’s gorgeous and he makes amends for his wrongdoing. So I love him!

Last but most certainly not least I’ve chosen my childhood crush. Yes, I did have a crush on a character from a book! The character is Gilbert Blythe and the book is Anne of Green Gablesby Lucy Maud Montgomery. OK so technically he becomes Anne’s boyfriend in a later book, but it’s in this one that Anne begins to thaw towards him, despite him calling her ‘carrot hair’.

Gilbert is drop dead gorgeous, especially as played by Jonathan Crombie, and he makes amends with Anne for the way he treated her. Really, all along he’s been in love with her so this is why he was trying to get her attention. He genuinely cares about Anne, which is another reason why I love him.

So there you have it. If you want to read some more great answers to these questions, why not head over to Andrea Mansue’s blog?

Share this:

Like this:

It’s been a couple of months now since I published Reunion of the Heart. I thought I’d share an excerpt from it with you. For those of you who don’t know anything about it, it’s a romance about a young woman, a writer, who returns to the school where she was really unhappy as a teenager to attend a reunion.

Little does she know it, but her life is about to change forever. This scene takes place at the reunion, where Anna has just encountered Will, the man who made her life a misery when they were at school together. Enjoy!

‘Anna?’ She turned around and Will was standing by her side. She looked up at him. He was tall, taller than she remembered and not half bad looking. Her face burned as their eyes met.

‘What do you want?’ Her voice was barely a whisper. She removed her hand from his grasp and cleared her throat, saying more loudly and with some anger, ‘Will, I have nothing to say to you. After the way you treated me at school, did you really expect me to talk to you tonight? You and Matt and your friends made my life a misery. All those taunts and catcalls. I would have found it hard enough anyway just being a teenager. But the way you and your friends behaved towards me – well, to be blunt it made me want to end it all.’

Will was silent; his face was pale apart from two high spots of colour on his cheeks. He appeared stunned by what Anna had just told him. Finally he nodded. ‘I understand,’ he said slowly.

She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think you do understand. I don’t think bullies can ever really understand what that kind of treatment feels like until it happens to them.’

There was a long pause. Anna wanted to turn away but something made her stay where she was.

‘That may be so,’ he said at last, ‘but I just wanted to tell you how sorry…’

‘Anna, is everything OK?’ Melissa’s voice came loud and clear.

‘Yes, I’ll join you in a second,’ Anna called. She turned back to Will. He was standing rigidly as if he were tense. For a moment she wanted to let him speak, to give her his apology. But then she remembered how he’d treated her at school, how awful he’d made her feel and her resolve hardened.

‘There are times when sorry isn’t good enough,’ she told him, watching as the redness on his cheeks spread. Before he could say anything else, she turned away and dashed across to her friends, sitting down with them.

‘What did he want?’ Melissa asked her.

‘To apologise,’ Anna said frowning as she glanced back to see Will’s retreating form. ‘It wasn’t accepted.’

I hope you enjoyed this excerpt. 🙂 Reunion of the Heart is available on Amazon.com and Amazon UK.